Speech

Speech at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Transcript of Minister George Yeo's off-the-cuff speech at a dinner held by the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP),1915 hrs, 5 February 2007, Ritz-Carlton Hotel
Thank you Kishore for your kind words. Dear friends, ladies and gentlemen. I was in India two weeks ago, had a good trip, spent nine days there. While in Calcutta after calling on the Chief Minister, I had a bit of time to look around so I attended a mass at Mother Theresa's house. Very interesting gathering; there was a Singapore nun there, she had been there for over ten years; Sister Maria Tony. I wondered why someone from Singapore would want to dedicate her life to picking up the dead and the dying in the back alleys of Calcutta and living that life. There were many nuns there who were in their ninth year. They take their first vow in the fifth year, renewable every year. In the tenth year they have to decide - final vows for eternity. So if you are not sure, please, there's a way out; if you are sure, then you're in the room. So the priest gave a very tough sermon and while he was talking, I could hear the din of traffic noise outside, in the streets of Calcutta. Then suddenly, I heard the call of the muezzin. Now this is a Hindu city. I told myself, I thought wow, what diversity in this country, India, and its ability to internalise this diversity and to find it unremarkable that the tiny woman from Albania should come into their midst, become one of them and then when she was beatified, was celebrated as an Indian, on the way to canonization.


China and India in that comparison- China is not India. China has a very different sense of itself; its deep internal construction is very different. Superficially there are similarities, as there is between China and the US and China and Europe. But if you look into it's deep construction, it is very different. When we talk about China's future and China in the 21st century, how China will behave in a world community, China's attitudes towards democracy, towards law, towards social justice. It is important first to look into this deep construction because that is their nature. Naturally we should not be deterministic, there is nothing inevitable in human history, but when we understand its nature, it becomes easier to anticipate its moves and you'll be less suprised by its actions.